Amid shock at the UK’s unexpected referendum vote to leave the EU, various historical events have been cited as parallels, notably the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It reminds me of another destructive decision with unanticipated consequences more than half a century ago.
In 1963, the US government under President John F Kennedy passed capital controls to tax investment in foreign securities. The law revived the City of London as the primary centre for international finance by encouraging the creation of the offshore eurodollar bond market. Fifty-three years later, New York has not regained the crown.
It sounds like a minor change compared with the economic and political impact of Brexit but it was the first in a series of events, leading through the Big Bang deregulation of the City 30 years ago this year, and the creation of the European single market in the early 1990s. They were the foundation for the global transformation not only of the City but of the UK economy.